Upgrade to WordPress 2.0

Took the plunge. As part of the redesign effort for this blog, I was hoping to upgrade to WordPress 2.0. Thankfully the developer team met their deadlines and did release the new version. Aren’t they great? You bet! Congratulations to all WordPress Developers.

The majority of differences between 2.0 and previous 1.5.x versions are in the user interface (admin area) and casual users won’t see them. There is the new “Roles and Capabilities” determination for blog subscribers/authors. A good run-down of all the changes, with an explanation, comes from Asymptomatic. Also, with the upgrade of the platform, WordPress has redesigned their main site and provided an improved, and organized, documentation section. That is especially good to see.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.0 on this heavily modified blog took only 45 minutes to get it back up and working. Not bad when you consider that counts backing up the database, deactivating over 20 plugins, deletion of all files, FTP of all new files, unrelated phone call interruptions, and the final re-activation of select plugins to get the blog running. There was a bit more to it, but that covers the major tasks.

…WordPress simply the best blog platform available anywhere…

Comments and posting are working. The new theme, Exquisite, is functioning. I will enable it later as the sidebar still needs some work.

As for WordPress 2.0, I admit that there are some quirks I’m discovering and I’ll probably spend a few hours fixing and tweaking things. However, that is because this blog had been modified a great deal with numerous plugins/hacks over the past several months. If this were a new installation, I am certain that the famous WordPress 5-minute (or less) install is still a safe and honest promise from the developers.

This version looks just like WordPress Multiuser in the administration area. It is very clean, easy to use and navigate, and quite powerful. All of that from free software. Can’t beat it.

So, for what it is worth, I now declare WordPress the King/Queen of the personal/business blogging platforms – opensource or commercial. Alright, to be fair – I’ll have to caveat that with my trusty-dusty “of the platforms I have tried” qualifier. As a yardstick on what I have tried, I have downloaded and installed (or tried to install) almost all of the blogs, portals, wikis (and several other CMS platforms) at Opensourcecms.com. I’ve even installed Movable Type and have/had Typepad, Blogger, LiveJournal accounts. For me, WordPress is the clear winner. It is not even close.

In fact, the new version of WordPress – out of the box – allows for the easy importing of posts from a Movable Type blog. “The importer is smart enough not to import duplicates, so you can run this multiple times without worry if—for whatever reason—it doesn’t finish. If you get an out of memory error try splitting up the import file into pieces.”

But, the new platform doesn’t stop there. You may also import from these accounts and processes, too. “Blogger – Import posts and comments from a Blogger account; Textpattern – Import posts from a Textpattern Blog; and, RSS – Import posts from an RSS feed”

What’s the point here? The level of user knowledge required to launch a WordPress blog is much lower than a Movable Type blog, for instance. Yet, you get the same power of Movable Type. I think you actually get more, but that is still being debated. Either way, more people can use the WordPress platform – easier and faster, out of the box – than any other platform you might choose to host yourself, or acquire hosting to launch.The WordPress process of installation is easier and cleaner. The support community is solid and quite helpful. OK, the Multiuser version still needs some work, which I am sure will be done, but multiple blogs can be done in other ways using WordPress.

I think it is quite safe to say that WordPress has now completely eclipsed other platforms. I know, it is just my lil’ opinion, but I’ve said it and I’m not ashamed. I note, with some humor, that the announcement has now been made public that Yahoo! now offers one-click (well, a few to be fair) launching of a WordPress blog. In fact, you may now “Setup one blog or two dozen in seconds.” Another platform’s announcement of a similar deal made it sound like it was a coup, of sorts. Well, with this announcement, we see that WordPress receives the same appreciation and respect as the other platform.

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Welcome. I'm Robert French. Blogs are part information and part opinion. This blog seeks to share information about what we are doing in public relations higher education classes to prepare students for the ever changing world of communication. The opinion comes in when I share why I think it is important. Sometimes I'll also write about current topics in public relations. The opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employers.